Pisa: UK does better than expected in collaborative problem-solving – rankings at a glance

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British teenagers perform better at working in groups to solve problems than they do in reading and maths, global rankings suggest

Singapore has topped the league table for how well teenagers work together in groups to solve problems – and the UK did better than expected, the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) revealed today.

It is another top place for Singapore, which also came first in the 2015 Pisa international rankings in reading, maths and science when they were published last year.

The results of Pisa's collaborative problem-solving tests show that the UK came 15th – or, once sample sizes were taken into account, between 12th and 16th place. The UK's average test score of 519 is not statistically different from Germany, the USA, Denmark or the Netherlands.

Researchers at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, which runs Pisa, found that there was a strong link between how well 15-year-olds did at collaborative problem-solving and how well children did in the core Pisa subjects.

Problem-solving? No problem...

In the UK, around 12 per cent of students performed at a top level of proficiency – meaning they could successfully carry out complicated problem-solving tasks, which required them to resolve disagreements and conflicts – compared with around 8 per cent across OECD countries on average.

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